Introduction: Sustainable Livelihoods, Conflicts, and Transformation

Introduction to the Journal of Global Initiatives Volume 10, Number 2 Sustainable Livelihoods and Conflict

Volumes of highly twisted knots and links

We show that for a large class of hyperbolic knots and links, we can determine bounds on the volume of the link complement from combinatorial information given by a link diagram. Specifically, there is a universal constant C such that if a knot or link admits a prime, twist reduced diagram with at least 2 twist regions and at least C crossings per twist region, then the link complement is hyperbolic with volume bounded below by 3.3515 times the number of twist regions in the diagram. C is at most 113.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures. Minor changes to clarify exposition, fix typos, and correct a historical inaccuracy in the introduction. Paper has now appeared in AG

Before Textuality: Orality and Interpretation

Walter J. Ong needs little introduction here. His many books and myriad shorter works - among them The Presence of the Word (1967), Interfaces of the Word (1977), and Orality and Literacy (1982) - have established whole new areas of investigation in the cultural and psychological aspects of comparative studies in oral tradition. His Festschrift was published as volume 2, number 1 of Oral Tradition

International Comparison of Household Savings Behaviour: The German Savings Puzzle

This mea discussion paper presents excerpts of the International Savings Comparison Project covering household savings behaviour in seven countries. The whole series of comparative country studies can be found in a special issue of the journal “Research in Economics”, Volume 55, Number 2, June 2001. The introduction gives an outline of the research program of the project. A project as complex as the International Savings Comparison Project has sparked discussions and controversy. Tullio Jappelli, who has accompanied the International Savings Comparison Project since its inception, has accepted the invitation to write a critical discussion of the project’s work so far. His discussion and a brief rejoinder by Axel Börsch-Supan compose the second and third part of this discussion paper. The last part of this paper presents the results of this project for Germany.

Price effects of VAT introduction in Croatia

This Occasional Paper is based on the research project “Analysis of the fiscal system of the Republic of Croatia at the introduction of value added tax” undertaken by the Institute of Public Finance and financed by the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Croatia. Starting from the research project and the paper published in Croatian in the Institute’s journal “Financijska praksa”, Volume 20, Number 2 (August 1996) the revision of results was undertaken and presented in this Occasional Paper. The revision of original results was necessary because of changes in Croatian sales tax which were put in force after the Institute’s project has already been completed. The author of this paper is Martina Dalić (Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Croatia). The author thanks Danijel Nestić (Economics Institute, Zagreb), Saša Mađarević (Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Croatia), and Zdravka Barac and Zlatko Fabijančić (Tax Administration of the Republic of Croatia) for helpfully providing data and giving useful comments

The D2-D6 System and a Fibered AdS Geometry

The system of D2 branes localized on or near D6 branes is considered. The world-volume theory on the D2 branes is investigated, using its conjectured relation to the near-horizon geometry. The results are in agreement with known facts and expectations for the corresponding field theory and a rich phase structure is obtained as a function of the energy scale and the number of branes. In particular, for an intermediate range of the number of D6 branes, the IR geometry is that of an AdS_4 space fibered over a compact space. This D2-D6 system is compared to other systems, related to it by compactification and duality and it is shown that the qualitative differences have compatible explanations in the geometric and field-theoretic descriptions. Another system -- that of NS5 branes located at D6 branes -- is also briefly studied, leading to a similar phase structure.Comment: 35 pages (Latex) and 2 figures (encapsulated postscript). Ver2: added discussion of the relation to the system without D6 branes (in the introduction and in figure 1); added description of the geometrical realization of the R symmetries (in section 3.1

The effect of blood on the ability of biofilm formation by Listeria monocytogenes strains

Introduction: Listeria monocytogenes strains are widespread in the natural environment and are the etiological factor of listeriosis. Food is the main source of L. monocytogenes. Secondary contamination of food products which results from the formation of biofilm by L. monocytogenes on the surfaces of the processing devices makes an essential problem. Material and methods: We evaluated the ability of biofilm formation in media supplemented with sheep blood (in a volume of 5.0, 10.0, 20.0 and 50.0%) for the reference strain L. monocytogenes ATCC 7644 and strains isolated from the human blood and carrots on the polypropylene surface. Results: The strain isolated from blood most efficiently formed a biofilm with increasing blood sheep’s addition (nutrient broth — 4.87 × 105 CFU × cm-2, blood supplement 50.0% (v/v) — 3.4 × 107 CFU × cm-2).The number of L. monocytogenes recovered from the biofilm for the reference strain and the strain from carrot increased to 20.0% by volume of the blood addition (3.07 × 105 CFU × cm-2 and 4.03 × 105 CFU × cm-2 respectively — nutrient broth; 1.1 × 107 CFU × cm-2 and 9.23 × 106 CFU × cm-2 — blood supplement 20.0% (v/v)). Decrease in the number of cells recovered from the biofilm for the reference strain and the one isolated from carrot has been demonstrated at 50.0% addition of blood into nutrient medium (8.8 × 106 CFU × cm-2 and 7.87 × 106 CFU × cm-2 respectively). Conclusion: The addition of sheep blood to the medium at concentrations up to 20.0% increases the number of cells recovered from the biofilm for all studied L. monocytogenes strains whereas medium with 50.0% blood stimulates the biofilm formation only by the strain isolated from blood